After the 1997 election, our party spent 13 years in the wilderness before regaining the trust of the British public. Today, we face an even worse prospect. We have fewer MPs and face a deeper well of public anger than we did in 1997. Unless we want to spend the next 13 years in opposition, our Party needs to change.
Change starts with understanding why we lost. We lost because we failed to deliver on the promises we made. We promised to cut immigration – instead, it rocketed. We promised to deliver on the NHS – and while we invested more than ever did not deliver increased performance. We promised to level-up the economy – there too we fell short. But we didn’t just fail to deliver our promises. We also failed to show a clear, common creed and succumbed to internal infighting, allowed our message to become muddled. The blue rosette lost its meaning for too many voters.
To win again, we need to refocus on delivery and reunify our Party. We can do both by rediscovering our principles. Our policies must adapt to circumstances, but they must always be based on core principles, forming a common conservative creed around which our Party can unite.
Our Party’s core principles are simple common sense.
We believe that mass migration must end. Voters are rightly angry at the surge in legal and illegal migration. We must cut legal migration, removing the strain it places on public services and housing. And we must stop illegal migration – because without secure borders, we lack the essentials of a sovereign state.
We believe that prison works. Prison protects the public by removing criminals from our streets. And it ensures trust that our justice system punishes criminals as they deserve. We need more prisons to incarcerate repeat offenders and reduce crime, while offering opportunities for rehabilitation.
We believe that market economics drive growth. Government must therefore create the conditions for free markets to flourish – encouraging investment, enabling entrepreneurs, dismantling monopolies, and promoting property ownership. We must also build vital infrastructure, secure affordable energy sources, and equip the next generation with the practical skills they need to prosper in the economy of the future.
We believe that peace comes through strength. As global threats rise, the UK must maintain strong armed forces to deter aggressors, defend our values, and stand by our allies. We must invest substantially more in our defences and protect our critical industrial capabilities.
We believe that the NHS is a public service that must deliver. Government must ensure universal access to healthcare. The pandemic exacerbated NHS waiting times, but the root problem is productivity, not resources. The NHS has more funding and staff than ever, yet its performance has stagnated. We need bold solutions that prioritize patients and sweep away inefficient bureaucracy.
These are the core principles that the Conservative Party has always upheld during its long history. We must rediscover them, apply them to deliver for the public, and reunite our Party around them as our common creed. But this is not enough. We also need to reform our Party into an organization capable of fighting and winning elections once again.
This means a renewed role and respect for members. Members are the lifeblood of our party, selflessly doing the hard work required to elect Conservative MPs and councillors. A reformed Party must empower members, and take away power from the men in grey suits who have too often overridden the wishes of local associations. We must return power over candidate selection to members and implement a total overhaul of CCHQ. With local elections around the corner, and the next general election only a few years away, we need swift and far-reaching reform to take the fight to Labour, Reform, and the Liberal Democrats.
We do not need to spend decades in the wilderness before it wins again. But we have a mountain to climb. Winning the next election requires change – rediscovering our core principles and reforming our Party machine. This work will not be completed overnight. No single person or faction holds all the answers. But, by changing, we can regain voters’ trust, old and young, in every corner of the country.
A reformed Party must empower members, and take away power from the men who have too often overridden local associations, says Conservative leadership contender Robert Jenrick
